The Hide Bar - Newsletter

                                             

Number 8, October 2007

As always, we’ll start with the new additions. After changing the cocktails last month, we’re changing (some of) the wines this month. New styles by the glass include a gorgeous red Bordeaux, a dark and brooding Italian primitivo and a crisp and clean New Zealand sauvignon blanc, along with a new Kiwi pinot noir and Chilean merlot. Further down the list, we have a few treats including an American small berry mourvedre and the famous Chateau Musar from Lebanon. Consequently there will also be lots of delicious bin ends available as well, with around 10% off the previously list price. Yum.

Next up, a bit of sherry thanks. To celebrate our first 8 months trading, we’ve just had a staff jaunt down to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Southern Spain. As well as having some of the best prawns around, Sanlúcar is famous for sherry, and in particular, Manzanilla, the coastal version of Fino. Dry, slightly salty and really refreshing, it’s brilliant with seafood or generally as an aperitif. Must be served very fresh and very cold, and we think it’s great. The thanks go to Javier Hidalgo at Bodegas Hidalgo who was an excellent host and taught us loads about sherry, as well as curing our hangovers with wonderful drink straight from the barrel. Our ‘random bit’ this month will be a little tribute to sherry – please see further down the page…

Thanks also Theme magazine for holding their Brandy tasting here, Snow Leopard vodka for holding the finals of their cocktail competition here and to IP Bartenders and Ian Burrell for the brilliant rum night – all during the last week of September. We learnt a lot in that week!

As well as our email newsletter, we have increased our electronic presence with a group on Facebook. If you have any idea what that means, please have a look at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5935520739 it’s another chance to catch up on our gossip or send us messages, and slightly more interactive than the website or newsletter.  

Our new chef, Eddie, continues to do great things in the kitchen, including a couple of buffet options if you’re planning a party. We also have a Christmas menu if you’re organising your parties for December. All are available from the website at www.thehidebar.com/food. Speaking of Christmas, if you’re thinking of joining us, please get in touch for ideas and options. We’re booking up rapidly, so the sooner the better.  

Cheers!  

Paul

EVENTS
Tuesday tastings: Last roughly an hour and include random facts, helpful hints and a little bit of tasting. They are free to attend for the moment and you don’t need to book. Just turn up and see what’s going on.

This month (October), we have:

Tuesday the 9 th October, 7pm
Cider & Perry. Other than loving the Aspall Suffolk Cyder that we sell, we thought we didn’t know enough about cider & perry. So, we’ve decided to buy in a load and taste it with you. A little voyage of discovery if you like. We’ll find some interesting bits and pieces, but if there’s anything you like in particular and think we ought to try, drop us a note at stuffmadeoutofapplesandpears@thehidebar.com and we’ll make sure we get some in.

Tuesday the 16 th October, 7pm
Tequila – revisited. Although we had a tequila night last month, we thought we ought to have another and this time include some cocktails. Don Julio will be here (ok, not quite, but someone representing them) to suggest some good mixes, and we’ll be knocking out some great cocktails for you to try. We’re still big tequila fans, but only good stuff, so come and see what you’ve been missing out on all these years!

Tuesday the 23 rd October, 7pm
A very very nice man from Glenmorangie will be coming to talk to us about the range and let you lovely people have a taste or two. Not only that, but there are some big changes in the world of Glenmorangie in October, so it could be quite interesting. Eddie really knows his stuff, so come armed with your best whisky questions…

Tuesday the 30 th October, 7pm
The house of Chapoutier produce some fantastic wines, including the La Bernadine Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the sweet Banyuls that we stock. As well as these, we’ll be tasting some other examples from the range. It should be a great night of great wines.

RumFest
One last date for your diary – 16th-21st October 2007. The UK Rum Experience will be taking place at The Lindley Hall, The Royal horticultural halls, 80 Vincent Square, London SW1P 1PE. Doors open from 10.30am. Show finished at 5.30pm. Brilliant!

Last bit

Sherry!

As we mentioned in the opening bit, we’ve been down to Sanlúcar to drink sherry. Now we think that sherry is much maligned and not appreciated as it ought to be, so are going to be on a bit of a sherry mission during October.

Far from just being the sweet cream style favoured by your grandparents, sherry comes in a great variety of styles, few of them actually sweet. Our favourite is the bone-dry manzanilla, produced in a solera system with a yeast flor covering the wine as it matures, removing oxygen (the picture shows a cut-away barrel with the flor on the surface). It’s crisp, slightly salty and brilliant in a Bloody Mary as well as ice cold from the bottle. We sell the 50cl bottles (a good size to keep it fresh and cold) for just £10, or a 75ml glass for £1.50, so no excuse not to try.

Of the varieties, we then sell the Amontillado Seco, manzanilla that has been oxidatively aged in oak to give a wonderfully nutty, dry sherry with a golden amber colour; then the Oloroso Seco, a much more oxidised wine produced in the solera system without the manzanilla stage. Richer and smoother than the Amontillado, it makes a good ‘inter-course’ drink or a rich aperitif. Next up, we sell the Pedro Ximénez. Produced from the grape of the same name (unlike other sherries which use the palomino grape), they are left in the sun to dry, then pressed to extract the remaining juice which gives an incredibly rich and sweet sherry with flavours of raisins (surprisingly), figs and prunes. We serve on our vanilla ice-cream, but if you have a sweet tooth, it’s great on its own or with any dessert. These three range from £2.60 to £3.00 a glass; definitely worth a try.

Finally, we have a little of the Palo Cortado Viejo V.O.R.S. This very rare sherry starts life as an Amontillado, but is then transferred to the Palo Cortado Solera and aged for at least 30 years. It’s incredibly complex with a long, delicious finish. Not cheap (we sell for £6.80 a 75ml measure), but fantastic and you won’t get the chance to try it in many bars!

There are of course many other styles of sherry, not least the ‘cream’ styles that would be your first consideration when thinking of this wine, but we don’t stock them as we think the alternatives are so much more interesting. Most creams are blends of Amontillado or Oloroso and PX to give the sweetness anyway, so why not try the components!

Right, time to stop it with the sherry, but please feel free to ask more at the bar, or ask for a taste just to see what they’re like. Any mistakes, please let me know!  

Business card draw
To try and spread word a little more, we’re inviting all our customers to drop their business cards in the pot by the front door so we can add them to this newsletter mailing list. As a little incentive, we’re offering a bottle of something tasty to a random card pulled out of the hat once a month. For September, that was a bottle of Bollinger Special Cuvée to drink in or take away.

Congratulations to James Singleton for winning September’s Bolly! Please drop in with your card to collect your prize.

Next month, we continue the champagne theme with a bottle of Veuve Cliquot Yellow Label. Good luck!

Other stuff
Our back room is available for hire, and we’d love to hold tailored wine tastings or cocktail classes. Just get in touch and let us know what you’d like to do. We have a couple of buffet options for parties, available at www.thehidebar.com/food.htm.

Likewise please get in touch if you have any comments and suggestions, please email everyone@thehidebar.com.

 

The Hide
39-45 Bermondsey Street , London . SE1 3XF
t: 020 7403 6655; f: 020 7117 4173
www.thehidebar.com; everyone@thehidebar.com